"Actual leather and paper?" she said. "Not a datapad?"
"Written in my own handwriting, even," he said. "That's the fifty things. I guess Grond's rubbed off on me over the years." The halfogre loved books.
"Here's the most important thing in there," he said. "Just in case you don't read it. Do your own research."
"I've heard you say that before," she said.
"Because it's important," he said. "Do your own research even if it's your own mother, who loves you deeply, sending you off on the job. Because even she misses stuff sometimes, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to discover that she left some details out to see how you react."
Darsi nodded.
"Here's the second thing," he said, handing her a pistol. "It's—"
"Mom already tried to give me a gun," she interrupted. "I'm not taking a gun."
"That strikes me as poor decision-making," Brazel responded. "Guns are useful. Guns that are small enough that they don't get noticed and taken away from you are even better."
"No," she said. "Not for a delivery mission. No guns."
Brazel shrugged. "Your choice," he said. "Just be open to changing your mind if you discover you need to."
"I will," she said. "I took one when I needed to defend my brothers and sisters. But not for this."
"So be it," Brazel said, hugging his daughter. "Any point to saying comm me if you need anything?"
"Already knew it," Darsi said, hugging him back.
* * *
Hours later, Darsi sat on her bed in her room, going through the dossier her mother had left for her and pondering the idea of leaving before the morning. The planet she was being sent to was called Untkaar. She'd never heard of it before, but the dossier explained that it was an unclaimed planet in the large demilitarized zone between ogre and Benevolence space. Being closer to the Benevolence than she needed to be gave her the shivers, but she put that thought away. This was going to be the first time, but it certainly wasn't going to be the last. The planet itself was a basic diverse terrestrial, with no one biome dominating any other, and two uninhabitable moons. The contact she was to meet was named Fahrhad. There was no description provided of Fahrhad at all; not even a race. Odd, she thought. The name sounded like it was probably a male, and probably a human, gnome, or ogre, at that; the odds of meeting with a dwarven male were pretty low and the name didn't fit the dwarven style anyway, and most elven given names were nouns or adjectives.
He could be something else, she thought. But even the less populous races rarely used single names. No troll would go by one, and no goblin had a given name. She didn't know as much about the fae or the korrylen, but she didn't think it too likely that Fahrhad was one of them either.
She kept reading, and eventually discovered a passphrase that Fahrhad was to use to identify himself, or herself, or xirself, depending on what Fahrhad actually was. There was one for her too. Well, that would make things easier.
The drop was scheduled five days away. The trip would take three through tunnelspace, meaning that she'd have some time to land and scope out the neighborhood thoroughly before she was due to meet Fahrhad. That seemed manageable.
She thought about it and threw the dossier into a bag, deciding to leave right away anyway. There was no reason to wait until tomorrow other than that her mother had planned for her to, and her voiceprint would get her into the office to collect the box. More time to spend on Untkaar meant that she'd be better prepared for the handoff to go successfully.
If there was one thing she'd learned from her father, it was that there was never any way to be too prepared.
* * *
Tarrysh wasn't at the hangar any longer, but she'd left instructions releasing a boat called the Debut into Darsi's care. Darsi smiled at the ship's identicode, wondering if they'd changed the ship's name just for her. It was, as her mother had said, a one-person skiff, although the "one-person" measurement was scaled to bigs, meaning that she'd have plenty of room to spread out in the thing. She adjusted her bag on her shoulder and rattled the package, wondering again what was inside it.
She liked the ship. It looked fast, for one thing. The engines were oversized for the body of the ship, and there were nodules on the underside and top of the ship that hinted at hidden weaponry, although if she got into a scrap it would probably better to be fast and maneuverable and heavily shielded. The ship was probably a bit overshielded as well, but she wouldn't know that until she was inside—
—the port-side door was open, and there was a light on inside.
There was someone in her ship.
For a brief fraction of a second she regretted not letting her parents give her a gun, then she remembered where she was. There was no way anyone was sabotaging her ship on Arradon before she'd even left. That might be something to worry about on Untkaar, but not yet. Surely not yet.
"Who's there?" she called out.
A large shadow detached itself from the inside of the ship.
Oh.
"Hi, Grond," she said, as the huge halfogre unfolded himself through the doorway.
"Thought you weren't leaving yet," he replied. "I left something in there for you."
"Decided to take off a bit early," she said. "No reason not to."
Grond grinned. "And you weren't even gonna say goodbye, huh?"
"Mom said you split already," she said. "You done bugging my ship? How long is it going to take me to find all of them?"
Grond looked offended. "Not a one," he said. "I really did leave a present for you in there."
"I'm going to look anyway," she said.
"Good girl," he answered.
"You want to come see me open it, or are you taking off?" she asked. "It'd better not be a gun. Mom and Dad both tried to give me a gun already."
"It's not a gun," he said. "Promise. Something a little bit more your style."
"Speaking of style," she said. "I actually could use your help for something, if you have a few minutes."
"All right," Grond said. "What did you have in mind?"
"Come aboard," she said.
* * *
The present, as it turned out, really was a great idea— a custom electroshock staff, dual-tipped, and fitted to her build. The thing was dented and scuffed up to look like a discarded piece of junk, but Darsi knew good work when she saw it, and she could tell that Grond had started with something expensive and then torn it apart and rebuilt it to her own specifications and his own standards, including making it look like something no one would want to steal. Darsi had been training in stickfighting since she was little, mostly with Grond as her trainer. She loved the thing instantly.
"It'll need a name," Grond said. "But not yet. Give it some time, use her a few times, then name her." His own prized weapon was an Iklis sniper's longbow named Angela. She'd never asked him where the name had come from.
"So what did you need?" he asked.
"What do you see when you look at me?" she asked.
"My boss's kid," he said.
She snorted. "That doesn't help. What does anybody else see when they look at me?"
"A baby," Grond said. "I'm guessing you don't want me pulling punches here."
"No," she said. "You're right. I'm young, and I'm a gnome, and anybody who isn't a gnome is going to immediately assume I'm a weakling. And my style is a little too … I don't know…"
"You look like your parents own things," Grond volunteered.
"Close enough," she said. "So I need you for something." She fished around in her bag and pulled two objects out.
Grond's eyes widened. "Your mother will kill me in my sleep," he said.
"Which is why you're going to help me, because if you make me do it myself, I'll make sure she knows that, and then she'll have a reason to," Darsi said.
The halfogre grinned. "Yeah, she will," he said. "Okay, fine. What did you have in mind?"
* * *
Darsi ran her hands over her bare arms, shivering at the unfamiliar touch and wi
ncing a bit at the pain. She'd shaved small patches of her fur off in the past, but removing all the fur from both arms was a genuinely radical move for any gnome, and she'd never even met one who had dared to shave off any facial fur before. She was pleased at how muscled her blue-skinned arms had turned out to be under all the fur, and the full-sleeve tattoo Grond had applied to her left arm looked fantastic. Her fur grew back quickly, so it would take no more than a week for that tattoo and the second one around her right eye and ear to become completely invisible. Best of all, Grond was both fast with the tattoo gun and impressively talented. The halfogre had acquired his tattoos from a variety of sources at a variety of times during his life and his tattoos were, charitably, rather eclectic, but the designs he'd created for her made her look a decade older and just dangerous enough that she wouldn't be immediately disregarded. And he'd managed the job in an hour, so she hadn't even really lost any time.
"Keep everything clean until you get to Untkaar," Grond said. "Wash it twice as often as you think you need to. You'll be healed up in a day or two but I suspect once you get where you're going you'll want to be not too pretty for a little while. We'd both prefer to not need to explain a system-wide infection to your mom when you get back."
She promised that she would, and meant it. Grond had tousled what remained of the fur on her head and left the ship without another word.
It was time to go.
* * *
The trip to Untkaar was uneventful. In fact, it was boring. There had been a suggested set of tunnelspace coordinates in the dossier, and all she'd had to do was enter them into the Debut's computer and spend the rest of the trip training and studying. The staff really was perfectly fitted for her, and she spent a few hours a day working up a sweat and going through the forms Grond had taught her.
The planet, from orbit, was actually pretty beautiful. About a third of it was water, with the remaining parts divided among mountainous or desert areas and purple vegetation. It was surprising that the place hadn't been claimed by anyone yet; if nothing else, the unique vegetation might make it a decent tourist destination.
Oh well. Maybe the entire place smelled of eggs or something. She'd figure it out when she landed. She went over the dossier one more time, orbiting just outside of the path the larger of the two moons took, and then had the Debut do a scan to see if there was any sort of authority she needed to register her ship with before she landed. It didn't look like there was, and politically the planet was mostly either unincorporated or de facto city-states around the larger population centers.
"In we go, then," she mumbled to herself, and requested a descent toward the closest city to the handoff. Unfortunately, it looked like she wasn't going to get to see any of the purple forests up close unless she decided to go sightseeing; she was headed to what probably either was or had started off as a mining center, located in a little pocket of flat land at a bend in one of the mountain ranges. The place was called Rainwyr; it had mountains on three sides and seaside on the third, so hopefully it would be scenic.
As she got closer, she revised that expectation. Rainwyr was clearly a current mining town, or at least there was a lot of mining going on near it, as there was smoke rising from half a dozen different spots in the mountains near the city. The ocean took on a distinctly greenish hue near Rainwyr that melted into more normal-looking blue the farther away it got, too. Whatever was going on there, they either lacked the technology or the priorities to avoid polluting their environment.
The comm system got a ping directing her to a berth in a spaceport on the north part of town; this worked out nicely, since that was the same side of town as the meeting. Ground control didn't ask a single question; the entire process seemed to be automated. There wasn't even any communication about berthing fees. Somebody's going to try and shake me down, she thought. Great; she may as well establish herself quickly as someone not to be trifled with once she landed.
The port wasn't especially busy; it looked like only about half of the available space was filled, and Darsi selected an isolated berth for the Debut to set down in. More foot traffic nearby might lead to some safety in numbers, but she felt like prioritizing anonymity was a better idea. She stowed away the case in a hidden storage area in her quarters and hung her staff over her back to go explore. She wouldn't go to the meeting place today, but learning the lay of the land— and possibly finding something to eat that wasn't the nonperishable stuff she'd brought with her— was still a good idea. She dressed in simple traveler's clothes, leaving her arms uncovered. She checked a mirror and decided that she looked tough enough to not scan as an easy mark but not so tough that anyone would assume she was out for trouble.
She set her face carefully before leaving the ship. It was the first time she'd been off-planet by herself, and it wouldn't do to look too much the tourist. She also half-expected a welcoming committee to be outside, and braced herself for trouble.
She was wrong; the berth was empty, with only a blinking console set next to the way out. The console specified a reasonable-sounding rate to keep the ship; she paid for a couple of days more than she thought she needed and set a passcode to keep the gate locked. Rhundi had provided her with a fairly comfortable expense account to draw on, so she had no real reason to be stingy.
* * *
Rainwyr was … boring. There was a strip of buildings on the edge of town, nearest the mines, that almost qualified as "bustling," but the first general store she poked her head into had prices in scrip and not in actual money, and the human behind the counter looked at Darsi strangely when she suggested she might buy something. Chances were the workers, whatever and whoever they were, were locked to the mines for most of their waking hours. The whole stretch probably got real busy right around payday, then settled back down again after sucking up all the money the miners had managed to eke out. There was a residential area that only escaped slum status by virtue of being relatively new, but would surely be so within a decade or so. A wide thoroughfare and a high fence surrounded what was probably a wealthier district where the managers and bosses lived. She didn't see many actual people, but most of what she saw were human, with the occasional gnome or ogre to liven up the mix. Most of them were dressed the same, in earth-toned work clothes that were probably company-issue. No dwarves, no elves, which wasn't too surprising. No one paid any attention to her whatsoever.
The place stank, too, badly enough that she was surprised any gnomes managed to live in Rainwyr at all. Gnomes were generally proud of their acute sense of smell, but there were times when it was less helpful than others, and this was one of them. Her theory about the rotten eggs was wrong, but the air had a sharply acidic stink to it, with a tinge of rot underneath. The smell was worse toward the ocean, although Darsi didn't see the source of the pollution anywhere. Underground pipes, probably, carrying some sort of slurry or runoff from whatever they were mining up there. That was probably the source of the rot. If there was anything in the water nearby, it wasn't surviving what the miners were doing to it.
I probably ought to find out what it is, she thought. She heard her father in her head. Always do your own research. And she hadn't bothered to find out what the main export of this place was, or what was getting dumped into the water not too far from where she'd landed her ship. Sloppy. Well, she had time to find out before the drop.
I don't like this place very much, she thought, changing her mind about finding the meetup right away. The coordinates were just north of town. It looked like she had enough time to at least give the general area a once-over before darkness hit. She'd spend the night on the ship. Maybe tomorrow she'd manage to find some fresh food. The place was right next to an ocean. On most planets, that meant an abundance of fresh food. Rainwyr appeared to be the exception, but maybe there were businesses nearer the shore that didn't take scrip.
She almost commed her father on the spot when she figured out where the coordinates were. It was an ogre bar. Her mother had sent her to make a drop at
a goddamned ogre bar. Grond had once failed to tell Brazel that a job was happening in an ogre bar, and her father had had to crawl out of a window in the kitchen after a scrap went south. Brazel claimed it was the last time he'd broken his research rule. Grond had actually thrown him at their target during the fight.
There was no way this was an accident.
The good news was it was a good enough distance out of town, far enough that she was able to find a place to inconspicuously keep an eye on the door for nearly an hour. She took a deep breath. Other than the expected scents that she associated with ogres and their cooking, there were several different kinds of alcohol, most of them cheap-smelling, with a stale undertone she didn't quite recognize. She only saw a few ogres go in and out, all of them male.
It took a while for it to sink in. The place was probably a brothel. Please don't let the place be a brothel. There wasn't a name on the outside or anything. If she could find out what it was called that would probably let her know the nature of the place. The idea of ogres passing up the chance for a crude joke as the name of a whorehouse outside of a mining town …
It's called the Deep Shaft. I bet everything I will ever own that the name of this filthy place is the Deep Shaft.
Half of her wanted to collapse into giggles and the other half was disgusted beyond her ability to even think about it.
And I have to go in there the day after tomorrow.
Hopefully the time of the drop wasn't during Happy Hour. She'd worry about that later. It was time to get back to the ship.
* * *
Other than 'always do your own research,' the thing that Darsi's father had done his best to drive into her head was that she should always trust her own instincts. So when the fur on the back of her neck raised for no good reason as she approached the berth the Debut was occupying, she listened and slowed down. She pulled the staff off her back, quickly testing the resistance on the activation studs for the electroshocks at either end. The spaceport was abandoned other than her.
Tales: The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 3 Page 5
